{"id":140183,"date":"2019-10-15T12:13:51","date_gmt":"2019-10-15T16:13:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=140183"},"modified":"2019-10-15T12:28:50","modified_gmt":"2019-10-15T16:28:50","slug":"harold-bloom-1930-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/15\/harold-bloom-1930-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Harold Bloom, 1930\u20132019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Harold Bloom.(photo: Nancy Crampton)<\/p><\/div>\n

Harold Bloom, one of the most popular and controversial critics in American literature, died Monday at age eighty-nine. He was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the author of more than forty books, including\u00a0The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry<\/em>, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages<\/em>, and, most recently, Possessed by Memory: The Inward Light of Criticism.<\/em> His Art of Criticism interview<\/a>, which appeared in the Spring 1991 issue, is stacked with opinions on writers and their place in the canon. In Bloom\u2019s view, Alice Walker is \u201can extremely inadequate writer,\u201d John Updike is \u201ca minor novelist with a major style,\u201d and Saul Bellow is \u201can enormous pleasure but he does not make things difficult enough for himself or for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Do you think that fiction\u2014or poetry for that matter\u2014could ever die out?<\/p>\n

BLOOM<\/p>\n

I\u2019m reminded of that great trope of Stevens\u2019s in \u201cThe Auroras of Autumn,\u201d when he speaks of a \u201cgreat shadow\u2019s last embellishment.\u201d There\u2019s always a further embellishment. It looks like a last embellishment and then it turns out not to be\u2014yet once more, and yet once more. One is always saying farewell to it, it is always saying farewell to itself, and then it perpetuates itself. One is always astonished and delighted.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Read his\u00a0Art of Criticism <\/em>interview here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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